Paul,

Would you thank your Newfoundland correspondent for posting his thoughts?

True, New York City was a tiny port in the 17th century but it was better
than Boston and was groomed to become even greater by Governor Andros when
he arrived. Boston was smart and ignored the Navigation laws when they were
put in place in 165.1

Besides rebuilding collapsed docks and piers, Andros added new ones and
rimmed the end of the island with what they call a mole. He also introduced
a customs house and forced trade headed for new jersey to pay customs duties
in NYC.

Nancy

> From: "Paul R. Mitchell" <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: "A LISTSERV list for discussions pertaining to New York State
> history." <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2003 10:54:31 -0500
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: ports
>
> I am forwarding the following email I received in response to a
> posting to the MARHST-L email list.
>
> Paul
> ---
> Paul R. Mitchell
> New Rochelle, NY
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: 17th century ports of origin
> Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 16:31:25 -0330 (NST)
>
>
> Gentlemen, I've been reading with interest the thread on
> MARHIST-L in
> which you have participated, concerning seventeenth-century
> English ports
> engaged in trade with New York. I'd like to make a couple of
> observations
> that might be of some service to the discussion.
>
> First, New York was a relatively small port in the seventeenth
> century,
> second to Boston and Philadelphia; it was only in the eighteenth
> century
> that New York began to develop significantly as a major colonial
> port.
> Even in the second half of the eighteenth century, Philadelphia
> was still
> preeminent, according to John McCusker and Russell Menard in _The
> Economy
> of British America 1607-1789_ (Chapel Hill, 1985), p. 193. For
> more on New
> York's early history and emergence as a port, see chapter 9, "The
> Middle
> Colonies" of that book; see especially the many sources cited in
> footnote
> #4.
>
> At the other end, yes, Bristol was a major port in the
> seventeenth
> century, but it was a very distant second to London even then.
> According
> to Ralph Davis, "London was by far the greatest of the English
> seaports,
> without a serious rival. Until far into the eighteenth century
> the volume
> of its foreign and coastal trade at least equaled that of all
> other ports
> together. ... London opened up the American and West Indian
> colonies, and
> for over half a century almost monopolized their trade, throwing
> a meager
> share to Bristol." See _The Rise of the English Shipping Industry
> in the
> 17th and 18th Centuries_ (Newton Abbot, 1962), p. 34.
>
> Kenneth Morgan confirms this picture in _Bristol & the Atlantic
> Trade in
> the Eighteenth Century_ (Cambridge, 1993). Table 1.2 on p. 17
> describes
> "Number and tonnage of ships entering selected British ports from
> the
> American mainland colonies, 1721-1730," and London consistently
> dominates
> the numbers, with more than double and sometimes triple the
> number of
> vessels as Bristol, and with an even greater proportion of the
> tonnage
> totals. Morgan's footnotes are also useful in pointing to more
> specialized
> studies that confirm London's preeminence. I do not have to hand
> a copy of
> David H. Sacks, _The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic
> Economy,
> 1450-1700_ (Berkeley, 1991) but I am fairly confident that his
> work will
> confirm for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries what was an
> established fact by the eighteenth -- London was the dominant
> port in
> England's overseas trade with the colonies generally, and with
> the
> emerging port of New York in particular, once New York was
> acquired by
> the English in mid-seventeenth century.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Olaf Janzen
> Corner Brook, Newfoundland